a) Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a wireless headphone unit, a wireless microphone, a wireless headset and a data transmission method.
b) Description of the Related Art
The spread of digitally compressed music for example in the form of MP3 files has risen greatly in recent years. Audio files are digitized and stored for example on a hard drive of a computer or the like. Thus, computers are increasingly used as music servers in the private sector and the computer is used for playing back the audio files stored thereon. Thus, it is possible to listen to music on a wired system and, if the computer has for example a radio interface, it is also possible to listen to music wirelessly or it is possible to provide for wireless transmission of the audio files or the audio signals. There are also music servers which are connected to the Internet and which provide audio files free or for a fee. A user can download the free or paid-for audio files on to his own computer by way of the Internet and can then listen to the downloaded audio files. By means of a mobile telephone or a mobile radio-enabled PDA, a user, on the basis of HSCSD, GPRS, UMTS or the like, can access the Internet and thus also download audio files of that kind. In that respect however it is found that there is the disadvantage that a large amount of data has to be transmitted at often an only low data transmission rate.
A PDA or a notebook with a WLAN interface (IEEE 802.11) can also wirelessly access the Internet if the PDA or the network is within the transmission range of a WLAN access point. That is particularly advantageous in terms of the data transmission rate, in comparison with a mobile radio connection.
DE 20 2004 005 111 U1 discloses a wireless Bluetooth headphone unit which has an electroacoustic transducer and a transmitting/receiving unit for the wireless reception of signals which include audio signals to be reproduced.
DE 101 14 670 A1 discloses a mobile multimedia device having a first transmitting/receiving unit for communication with a mobile radio network and a second transmitting/receiving unit for receiving radio broadcast frequencies. Stored in a transmitter is a reception authorisation which was received by way of the first transmitting/receiving device. The multimedia device also has a decoding means for decoding the multimedia content received in encoded form by way of the second transmitting/receiving unit. An authorisation request for multimedia contents is communicated wirelessly by way of the first transmitting device.
The above-described downloading of data, in particular audio files, from the Internet is however not always acceptable in terms of copyright.